Sunday, November 15, 2009

The Ghost of Vannevar Hacked my Server

The Ghost of Vannevar Bush Hacked My Server is a website that continually reloads. Every so often and image of "the ghost of Vannevar" appears. He is formed from varying shades of 101010100111010o101010101000101. Which is computer code. This really only made sense to me once i looked up who Vannevar Bush was. During part of his career he worked on constructing an analog computer. I could see how this could be connected to the visual art presented by Michael Demers. I actually really didn't like this piece of digital art. I felt it was repetitive and lacked any other meaning. I suppose this could be a visual pun. Through this i mean that because Vannevar had great influence (I assume) on computers he has prematurely "hacked" into our computers (or servers). And because the digital code is a type of analog he, visually, is made out of an analog (part of his life work). Additionally, i believe there is a purpose to the continual and random reloading of the web-page. It's sort of like the pattern for the computer code (1000101 etc...) Its random but there are only two options for the next element...1 or 0. In this instance, Vannevar either appears or he disappears. Maybe this is a commentary on how the computer can take a life of its own..not in the sense of a robot...but as a different entity that "hacks" or oversees all that you do. I'm probably way off target...but i would really like to hear someone else's opinion. Because for the most part my reaction to this piece is, "huh?".

No comments:

Post a Comment